Double Cross (13 page)
The painkillers did wonders, though. Besides, I was still basking in the glow of the visit from Rob Morrow, and that helped take the edge off. It was almost as if his shiny white teeth had followed me home to light the Mason house for the approaching holidays. Kacey and I spent a ridiculous amount of time talking about whether and when he would call.
The weather was cold and damp, and all-in-all I figured if I had to be laid up for a while, I had at least picked the right day to start. A fire blazed in the fireplace, and Kacey had put up the Christmas tree and made clam chowder. There was little reason for either of us to go outdoors since Kacey’s finals wouldn’t begin for a week and a half. We sat in our flannel pajamas and sweatshirts on opposite ends of the couch, facing the fire, with our legs curled up beneath us. With chowder bowls in our laps, and Amy Grant Christmas carols floating in the background, I was enjoying the family feeling I’d had when Simon was alive.
I had retrieved Elise’s cell phone and flash drive from my room before we sat down to eat. When we finished our chowder, I pulled out the flash drive and stuck it into a port on my laptop. The g-drive came up on the screen. The only things on it were copies of Elise’s tax returns for the previous two years.
I scrolled through the returns. Everything seemed normal, though I was surprised that her salary at the ministry was so low. Whatever her social problems, there was no doubting that Elise could have made far more money working for a business. According to the returns, she donated ten percent of her pay right back to Simon’s ministry. Not exactly the picture of an embezzler.
I pulled the flash drive out of the computer. “There’s nothing on this but Elise’s tax returns.”
Kacey set her bowl on the end table. “How about her phone?”
I pulled it out and scrolled through her incoming and outgoing phone books.
“Anything interesting?” Kacey said. She popped a cracker in her mouth.
“I don’t know. It will take some time to check out these phone numbers. She’s got a bunch of them.”
“You really think she didn’t kill herself?”
I ran my good hand through my hair. “She probably did, but as long as we have some information, we may as well check it out, right?”
“I guess so, but that’s her phone. Don’t you think it’s kind of private?”
“Sure it is, but if Elise was murdered, and she’s up in the clouds or whatever watching us, do you think she’s saying,
Hey, what about my privacy rights?
Or, yeah, yeah, check the phone. Go find the jerk who killed me”?
Hey, what about my privacy rights?
Or, yeah, yeah, check the phone. Go find the jerk who killed me”?
Kacey smiled. “Good point. By the way, it’s heaven, not
up in the clouds or whatever.”
up in the clouds or whatever.”
I held up a hand. “Wait a minute. I don’t believe this.”
“You don’t believe in heaven?”
“No, I don’t believe what I’m seeing in her outgoing calls directory.”
“What’s that?”
I eased myself off the couch and limped over to my purse, which was hanging over a chair at the breakfast bar. I pulled out my wallet, found a plain white business card, and checked the number on it. “I thought so.”
“You thought what?”
“It’s Brandon.”
“What’s Brandon?”
“Elise called Brandon three times within twenty-four hours after I told her the auditors had discovered money was missing.”
Kacey leaned toward me. “You mean our Brandon? Dad’s accountant?”
“Yep.” I turned the phone off.
“Interesting. Brandon’s one of the few people who knew that Dad had a son. Why would she be calling him? Do you think he could be the one who was blackmailing Dad?”
“I don’t know. Even if he was, what would that have to do with Elise?” I tapped my finger on her phone as I ran the possibilities through my mind. “One thing’s sure. It’s time we paid Brandon a visit.”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing you got shot thirty hours ago.”
I pulled up my sweatshirt and checked the gauze bandage on my side. It was barely spotted. With the painkillers, I was feeling fine. “I’ll be okay for a while. Let’s go.”
“You’re crazy, but I’ll get my keys.”
I could tell by the way she hopped out of her chair that she couldn’t wait to get there.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
ASIDE FROM SIMON, BRANDON had been the person most responsible for helping me face my drinking problem. He cheerfully took calls from me in the middle of the night whenever a bottle beckoned me. I owed him, and I hoped like crazy that he wasn’t involved in Elise’s death.
One of the great things about Brandon was that if you needed him, he was always at home. Since he gave up on accounting, the guy lived like a cloistered monk. All he did was play in video-game tournaments, sleep, and hack into computers for fun (and sometimes, I supposed, money). He was the perfect friend for me, because he was one of the few people in the world whose social life was even more blighted than mine.
Once Kacey and I were in the car on the way to his apartment, I called him to let him know we were coming. He asked what it was about, and I told him I needed to talk. In the 12-step program that was essentially the same as telling him that I wanted a drink and needed support.
“Have you been drinking?” he said.
“I can drive.”
“Not if you’ve been drinking.”
“I’ve got a ride.”
“I’ll put on some coffee.”
I hated to mislead him. Technically, though, I hadn’t lied, and I didn’t want to tip him off, so I let him think what he wanted to think.
While we were driving to Brandon’s apartment, Michael called to check on me. I assured him I was feeling okay, but I had to rush him off the phone because we were pulling up in front of Brandon’s building.
“I’ll call you tonight,” he said.
“Sure, great.” I clicked off the phone.
Within a couple of minutes, Kacey and I were standing in the lobby of Brandon’s mid-rise apartment building just north of downtown Dallas. We called up from the lobby, and he buzzed us through. When we stepped off the elevator on the sixth floor, Brandon was waiting in the hall with his door propped open. His belly hung like a thick sausage over the belt of his cargo pants. He waved, then pushed his glasses up on his nose when he saw Kacey step out of the elevator behind me.
“Hey, you look pretty good,” he said as we approached the door. I made a conscious effort not to limp.
“From the phone call I thought this was going to be an emergency.” His eyes again moved to Kacey.
“I think you’ve met Kacey Mason.”
He stepped aside and let us walk past him into his apartment. He nodded to Kacey. “Sure, but you were only in high school. You’ve grown up very nicely.” His voice was practically whistling.
I looked over my shoulder at him. His eyes were all over her. I stopped and put a hand on my hip. “Don’t be creepy, Brandon.”
His face reddened. “What?”
Kacey didn’t seem to give it a thought. With her long legs and olive skin, she probably had guys scoping her like that several times a day at SMU.
“I read about your run-in at Starbucks. How long do you have to wear that thing?” He pointed toward the gauze-wrapped splint on my finger.
“Eight weeks minimum; maybe ten.”
“I thought you got shot?”
“That was here.” I pointed to my side. “It’s nothing.”
He shook his head. “Taylor, you are one tough b—”
“Don’t even think about using that word on me.”
He held up a hand. “Okay, okay. But has anyone ever told you that you should stay away from guns for a while?”
“Believe me, I’d love to. It wasn’t my fault. Whoever did the shooting was after the reporter, not me.”
“What’s she doing for protection? The reporter, I mean.”
“The cops are hanging around her house for now. Other than that, I don’t know. I just met her that day, so it’s not as if we’re close friends.”
“Katie’s really nice,” Kacey said.
Brandon gave her a glance but seemed gun-shy because I’d called him creepy. He fell in behind me as I walked through the entryway to the cramped living area of his apartment.
I had only been to Brandon’s apartment one other time, about three months earlier. It didn’t appear that he’d cleaned it since then. Two couches and a leather reclining chair were arranged into something resembling a triangle and planted in front of a giant flat-screen TV hanging on the wall. With all that theoretical seating space there was not a single place to sit. Faded clothing, an empty pizza box, and several video-game controllers littered the furniture. The television was off-level by at least an inch. The room smelled syrupy, and empty soda cans littered the floor beneath the television.
I waved my hand around the room. “So many choices. Where do you want us to sit?”
“Just a second,” he said, without a trace of embarrassment. He walked over to the tiny breakfast bar and pulled a couple of tall, narrow bar stools out onto the carpet in front of the television. “Here you go.”
Kacey looked at me as we took off our jackets. I placed a hand on my side, just over the spot where the gauze was, and eased myself up onto the stool. Kacey climbed onto the one next to me, still watching my hand. I’m okay, I mouthed.
With Kacey in a pink sweater, and me in a yellow sweatshirt, we must have looked like a couple of exotic birds on perches in the center of the room. Brandon looked more like a walrus. He sat on the floor with his back to the couch, one flabby leg folded beneath him, the other stretched out straight on the floor. He watched me get up on the stool. “Are you sure you’re okay? You look like you’re moving kind of slowly.”
“I’m fine. My side’s bothering me a little.” I wanted to change the subject, so I nodded at the pizza box on the floor. “You didn’t have to clean the place for us.”
He shrugged. “Believe, me, it was worse than this a few minutes before you got here. Do you want coffee or a Pepsi or something? I’ve got some chips and stuff.”
I noticed Kacey squinting at the half-chewed pieces of pizza crust in the box. Something bluish-green and fuzzy was growing around the edges. She crossed her arms. “No thanks, I’m fine.”
“Me, too.”
Brandon must have seen Kacey eyeing the pizza box. He reached behind him, closed the top of it, and put it on the floor next to him. “These things take up so much room in the waste can.”
We nodded.
He ran a hand through his hair—which did not appear to have been washed for several days—then wiped it on his pants. “So, what’s this about?” he said.
I cleared my throat. “One of the things we got from Elise Hovden’s house after her death was her telephone.”
“Yeah?”
“She called you several times during the two days before she died.”
Now he was the one crossing his arms. “So?”
“So, I didn’t know you and she were so close.”
“What are you doing, Taylor? I don’t have to explain to you why I was talking to Elise or anybody else. She called me. What am I supposed to do, hang up on her?”
“Actually you called her, too. Twice.”
“You probably noticed, then, that she called me first.”
“I did.”
“Just a second.” He jumped up and walked out of the room. When he came back, he was screwing the lid off a plastic Pepsi bottle. Maybe it was my imagination, but it sure seemed he was stalling.
“I don’t know why I should even tell you this,” he said, as he lowered himself back to the floor. He kicked off his tennis shoes. The bottoms of his socks were filthy gray. “She asked me for help. She wanted me to find someone for her—more accurately, identify someone.”
“Who?”
“Some guy she’d been calling at an Internet Protocol phone number—a computer phone number. She didn’t know who he was. She knew that I do some hacking and thought maybe I could help her.”
I cocked my head. “Why was she calling someone she didn’t know?”
“She didn’t say. I figured she was hooking up. You know, meeting somebody online. Happens all the time. I’ve done it.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Not a lot—actually, just once.” His neck reddened.
I could have had a field day with that one, but we were there on serious business. “Look, Brandon, regardless of whether other people do that sort of thing, we’re talking about Elise Hovden here. I don’t really see her doing it.” I turned to Kacey. “Do you?”
She just laughed.
Brandon took a drink of Pepsi and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Hey, I didn’t know her that well. She asked me for help, and I helped her. That makes me a good guy, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, it does. Did you find the man she was looking for?”
“In a sense.”
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